Whenever he sprinkles quinoa on his baked potatoes, salad or substitutes it for rice, Jeremiah Clark is supporting his business.

The southeastern Idaho farmer and seed processor owns the largest non-organic quinoa cleaning and packaging plant in the U.S. A new 5,000-square-foot facility in Ammon near Idaho Falls, scheduled for completion later this fall, will have an annual production capacity of 20 million pounds.

One of Clark’s largest customers provides quinoa to the U.S. military. He also sells to a quinoa flour manufacturer and to grocers. Idaho quinoa is shipped nationwide and worldwide.

Clark has developed a network of 17 Idaho quinoa farmers from Ashton south to Burley, making the dry, high altitude fields of the region the largest quinoa growing area in the nation.

Quinoa began to dominate Clark’s life in 2013.

“We thought our son might be gluten intolerant, so we started researching grains besides wheat,” Clark said. “We tried quinoa and liked it.”

The gluten-free grain, grown for centuries in South America, is a nutrient dense, high-protein food and is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. There are more than 100 types with the most common kernels being red, black and white.

A third generation farmer and owner of Clark Seed, a wheat and barley seed cleaning plant, he soon asked himself an obvious question.

Why not grow and process quinoa?

Of the many quinoa types, he developed a variety with a white kernel and named it Kailey after his oldest daughter. In the American Mills greenhouse, he bred the seeds to have low levels of saponin, the outer protective covering of quinoa that gives it a bitter flavor if the grain isn’t washed before cooking.

“My production right now is zero, though,” he said. “I don’t have time to grow it anymore and handle all the processing.”

As he and other farmers began growing quinoa, in 2015 he built a 2,400-square-foot cleaning and packaging plant and was processing 2 million pounds annually. Last year, when his farming network produced 7 million pounds of quinoa, he realized a larger plant was needed.

In spring, Clark hired contractors to build a 5,000-square-foot plant in the Clark Industrial Park.

“Once it’s up and running this fall, I’ll start selling directly to consumers from there,” he said.

He might use the original plant to process organic quinoa.

Once the new plant is running, “I’d like to devote more time to developing other quinoa varieties suited to Idaho’s climate.”

Title: President of American Mills

Age: 40

Education: Finance degree from Idaho State University

Family: Wife, Amanda, and three children

Hobbies: Snowmobiling, hiking, summited the Grand Teton